


If You Could Read My Mind

by citrinestone



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-22
Updated: 2012-09-22
Packaged: 2017-11-14 20:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/519156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrinestone/pseuds/citrinestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry has been reading in between the lines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Could Read My Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta nagandsev (and I also recommend her story about Nagini and Severus.) All mistakes are mine. Characters and world not mine. Thanks JKR for letting me play in your world. Title take from song with the same title by Gordon Lightfoot.

Potter had been trying to get me alone since the war ended five years ago. I agreed to meet with him, hoping those times would be sufficient. They were not. 

The first time, he thanked me for coming. We had met at some pub near Spinner’s End; it was his idea. He thanked me for coming, talked about the war, and I listened. I took my leave when he started asking me about his mother.

“I’ve already showed you the memories,” I told him as I got up from my chair. 

“What more do you want of me?”

I walked out the door not wanting to hear the answer and left him talking to himself, and all I heard was a bunch of mumbling.

I met up with him a second time, accidentally, at the Leaky Cauldron. If I had seen him before he saw me, I would have been gone before he could talk to me, but before I knew it, I felt a hand grab my arm. The grip was strong and familiar. I quickly pulled out my wand and pointed it between two green eyes. Then I heard Potter’s voice.

“Sorry,” he said with both his hands in the air.

“Don’t you ever touch me.”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

My first impulse was to say no, but I needed a drink, and it was one of the reasons I entered the Leaky Cauldron in the first place. The second was to have a rest, from what I cannot recall, but whatever the reason, it had tired me enough to dull my mind to be stupid enough to sit down with Potter. He gestured to a table and I sat down. The waitress came over right away and we ordered our drinks.

“What is it?” I asked before he started on his small talk.

“I’m just wondering how you are doing.”

“At this moment, not very well. Small talk is the bane of meeting up with people you are forced to talk to.”

He opened his mouth to say something, and I was saved by the drinks being served. I quickly drank mine down and slammed the glass on the table. 

“Thank you for the drink Potter,” I said as I stood up. “We must do this again sometime.” I pushed my chair into the table and walked away. With the words he chose and the waitress offering to clean up, I figured I had slammed the chair hard enough into the table that his drink had spilled on him. 

I couldn’t help but smile as I walked out the door.

Surely, I thought that it would be enough for him to leave me alone.

It was not.

I stopped counting the owls he sent me, or still sends me. Not quite as often as he used to, but enough. Asking to meet again, to meet with him. That I owed him a drink. After all, I did spill his. He wanted to keep in touch. Had some questions about potions. I still didn’t answer, but the boy has a thick skull, and he kept insisting. Sometimes, he would get to the point to what he really wanted to talk about: his mum.

I quickly tore up the letters. Wasn’t it enough that he had some of my memories, something he had offer to returned which were now shadows in my mind? I had enough _real_ memories that I was trying to put behind me. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t need them.

I had become accustomed to keep ‘constant vigilance’ not to run into Potter. 

When I saw him at the Gringotts, I quickly decided to come another day. I made haste to the lift and took a deep breath, relieved I had escaped. 

Before I was able to turn around, I felt another’s presence in the lift as the doors shut. 

I turned to see Potter’s back and him mumbling some spell.

“What did you just do, Potter!”

“I think you know.”

“Let me out.”

“I will.” He smiled. “Eventually.”

At that point, I couldn’t tell if he was more like his father or Lily.

I pulled out my wand and pointed it at him. “Open that door.”

He crossed his arms and leaned on the closed doors. “There are a couple of ways the spell can be broken. By me or in 24 hours. Something I learned in Auror training.” He leaned against the closed doors, smiling.

“You’re going to regret this. Move.”  
He moved away from the doors and found another place to lean. I pointed my wand at the doors and said some spells. 

Nothing but a snort from Potter.

“Alright then.” I sat at the furthest corner from Potter, which wasn’t far enough. “I’ll wait. I’ll just cast a spell so I can’t hear any of your babbling.” 

I pointed my wand in the air, and before I knew it, the boy had my wand. How did that happen? Maybe they did teach him something in his training, but I would not tell him this. His ego was big enough already. 

“Not a good idea to cast spells when sitting down, Snape.”

“I had no idea we were dueling.”

“Uhm. We—” 

“I want my wand back,” I said in a firm voice as I stood up and looked him in the eyes. We were almost the same size, and I knew he was no longer a boy that I could scare easily. I made myself stare at him a little longer, not letting him know that his eyes that resembled Lily’s were my weakness. 

I turned from him and asked, “What do you want Potter.”

“I think you know.”

I didn’t answer and he continued.

“I want to know more about my mum. I’ve gotten bits and pieces from you, but I know there is more.”

I remained seated not knowing what to expect from this bothersome Gryffindor. I could remain silent and try and enjoy his company, or give him enough information for him to open the doors. I knew it would be the latter. 

But I would let him beg a little more before I gave him some sweet stories of his mum that he would devour and leave me alone.

He continued talking as I pretended to ignore him.

“In my line of work, sometimes it is necessary that I use the pensive.”

Great. He was starting to talk about his job. 

“Sometimes the memories I see are from years ago. Before I was born. I’ve seen my mum in a few of them. And sometimes my dad.”

The boy could be lying, but he had my attention—but I wasn’t going to let him know it.

“Is there a point to this, Potter, or are you trying to bore me into telling you something?”

“The times I’ve seen my mum she is older than the memories you gave me. But I can never get close enough to hear what she is saying. It kills me, you know.”

“Why come to me? You have your aunt.”

“She wouldn’t see me.”

“Then I do believe that we have been wrong about her. Surely she must be a powerful witch to cast such a powerful spell to keep you away. I must stop by for tea one of these days to see how she does it.”

“Your sarcasm is wasting time, Snape. Tell me something about my mum. I want to know more than the opinion of people who never knew her. It seems like I just get the best of her or the worse of her. When I just want the human side of her.”

“People would have never come up with their theories, if you didn’t share what memories I gave you to the entire magical world. By the way, I want them back.”

He kept quiet for a while pondering something, which gave me time to do my own thinking and come up with a way to get my wand and get out of this lift. _What to tell him to get out of this lift? Then find Petunia and ask what she did to keep the boy away from her._

“I’ve been trying to give back your memories, but you tend to run away from me.” He sat himself down a little too close to me. When I looked at the distance between us, he scooted himself back. “What was her favorite movie? What kind of music did she like? Everyone is always writing about how she loved The Beatles.”

“Lily didn’t listen much to the Beatles, but to Wings, especially _Silly Love Songs._ ”

“All girls love silly love songs.”  
He snorted.

“That’s the title of a song, Potter.”

“Oh.”

“Her favorite movie was Melody. She often told me I reminded her of Jack Wild, especially when he played the Artful Dodger, which I fail to see the resemblance. Since I neither sang, dance nor wore a top hat.”

“Do you do those things now?” he asked me with a smile.

I gritted my teeth at him and took a deep breath. “Are you trying to be funny?”

“Did she ever talk to you after... you know? The lake incident.”

“You saw.”

“I saw what you wanted me to see. I find it unlikely that you never exchanged words after that. You had classes together, lived close to each other, grew up together.”

I turned away from him and looked at the wall in front of me. I didn’t want to do this. Why were the memories I gave him not enough? What he wanted to know were the memories I didn’t share. Leave it to a Gryffindor not to mind his own business. He wanted the memories that kept me sane through the madness of Albus and the Dark Lord: the same memories, which also kept my emotional growth dormant. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to forget, but I no longer wanted to rummage through them. 

He got up to stretch and paced for a few minutes before opening his mouth again. 

“Those old memories that I said I saw my mum in when she was older... in some... I also saw you with her.”

Then why in the hell was he asking me if he already knew the answer? Some obscured strategy he learned in Auror training, no doubt. More memories were coming to my mind as he paced some more in the small space. 

“Don’t you wish you could read my mind,” I said.

“I have once.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I was not practicing Occlumency and had no confidence in your ability to do Legilimency at that time.” I stood up, trying to avoid his eyes. “Some things are better left alone.”

“What is it that you want to hide?”

“It’s what I don’t want to share. Do you want to hear me tell you how I spent my time pining over your mother? Do you think I was so trite to stand outside the chapel with my head down, leaning against a wall as she took her vows?” 

The truth was, it was a tree, but I was already pitied enough, thought of as a fool or hated for my affection for Lily. I could say that I didn’t care what others thought. But I couldn’t stand the look in her son’s eyes. 

“There is one memory where she is outside someone’s door knocking. She wore a green hat and matching mittens.”

Memories started coming back to me. I could feel him stepping closer to me. I look at him as he caught me by surprised. As he pushed me against the wall, I heard him say, _“Legilimency!”_

His eyes. Those eyes. Her eyes. He was in my mind and I didn’t want to fight it. 

Me… sitting on my bed of in a flat I had after Hogwarts. I sat at the edge of my bed listening to knocking. 

“Let me in,” Lily yelled.

I stayed a while longer, then I cast the spell that opened the door. She walked in and slammed the door behind her. She had come in from the cold, her nose cold. 

I remembered her hat and scarf not being Gryffindor colors. But green.

“What took you so long?” she asked with a tear running down her cheek.

I got up to meet her and took her mittens off and used my hands to warm hers. Then, gently, I put one of my hands to her cheek and used my thumb to wipe her tear away. Then, our lips touched.

I didn’t want to share the private moments with Potter and thought of something else. 

My thoughts turned to her hands, and the next memory was her sipping out of my glass as we both sat at a bar in some Muggle pub. Yet another memory I didn’t want him seeing the outcome. I switched to another memory.

I met up with a pregnant Lily at an apothecary.

“Don’t be that way, Sev.”

“I can be anyway I damn well want.”

“Can we talk?”

“We have nothing to talk about. And stop calling me ‘Sev’. It makes it seem like you’re too lazy to say my full name.”

I walked out, slamming the door to the apothecary.

Another memory. She is crying.

“Just do as Dumbledore says,” I tell her.

“What’s this all about?” Lily’s eyes go to my left forearm. She slaps me.

I shut my eyes and was finally able to push Potter away from mind. I was going to have to Obliviate him. 

“Had enough, Potter?”

“I have seen all I need to know.”

“May I have my wand back?” I asked with a stern voice and my hand out ready to receive my wand.

“Sure,” Potter said with my wand in his hand. _“Obliviate!”_

 

~~~~~~~

I was in the lift, and I turned to see the doors shutting on Potter. 

I smiled to myself, glad to have dodged another interrogation from Potter.  
*************


End file.
